I went to see a horror movie last night (The Last Voyage of the Demeter), so with theatres basing their pre-movie fare on the theme of the main feature (which was rated R), I fully expected the trailers to be terrifying as well. I wasn’t disappointed. With the exception of the live-action comedy Strays (featuring the voices of Jamie Foxx and Will Ferrell in a canine gang), my friend and I were subjected to an endless pummeling of our sanity with gut-punching promises of gore, killings and shock.
In watching the movie I chose, I did so preferring the traditional movie monsters and tropes. Without adding spoilers, I can say that I got more good scares out of the movie, and nothing in the trailers convinced me to come out to see a majority of the movies they touted. The inhumanity in the way fear is exploited is becoming more extreme as people become numbed to the old methods. The trailers I saw leaned toward psychological horror, with an underbelly of the visceral, and I wasn’t particularly impressed by any of that.
The first movie in the lineup was an unusual one called It Lives Inside. The premise is based upon an East Indian cultural demon and looks like it involves a spiritual haunting from which an afflicted person cannot escape. Worse than that, anybody trying to help the person is also targeted for horrible happenings. This one made me jump and cringe a bit.
The Nun II movie is on the way. I never saw the other related ones, but it promises to offer similar jump scares, lots of blood and anti-religious frights. I knew it wasn’t for me, and the trailer didn’t change my mind.
The one film I was already familiar with and knew was coming was The Exorcist: Believer, which appears to be a franchise update. Ellen Burstein reprises her role as Chris McNeil, whose daughter Regan (Linda Blair) survived demonic possession. She is called to a home to help a father whose daughter and a friend are seemingly possessed. This seems to be a tribute to the original move which was released 50 years ago. Having seen the original a few times, I may catch this on home release, where I can change the channel if it’s over-the-top disgusting.
The big trailer was for Five Nights at Freddy’s. Having seen some of the licensed figures, I paid no attention because they didn’t seem at all engaging. Apparently this is a story of Chuck E. Cheese meets possession of some sort, with a security guard and his daughter meeting up with animatronics in an abandoned theme park which come to life, kidnap children and commit mayhem and murder. I sure hope this doesn’t spell the end for the pizza franchise (or worse, Disney).
A less horrific offering but still with death and fear as a theme was an Hercule Poirot mystery remake, A Haunting in Venice. It delves into the possibility of psychics actually being able to summon the dead. The great Belgian detective is pushed to his limits as he attempts to unravel a séance connected Halloween murder in Italy. The Agatha Christie based story brings back Kenneth Branagh as the sleuth after a successful turn in Death on the Nile. This one is a possibility.
I suppose my problem is that I don’t find the horror franchises which depict murder entertaining. And when I say murder, I am referring to cold killing of a human being by another. I sat through a couple of Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but they’re not at the top of my favorites list. Monsters and supernatural beings offer the safety of their implausibility, so watching a man/bat terrorize a ship’s crew didn’t faze me, in spite of barrels of blood. At least I was primed for it, having been amped up by the frightening reels of coming attractions rolled out beforehand.
Maybe I should take up going to comedy shows. At least the pre-show acts would make me laugh, too.
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